CHAPTER 3
DEEP CHANGE: WHERE MIGHT I GO WRONG, AND WHERE CAN I GO RIGHT?
Kara Powell
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 1 (DISCERNMENT) : NOW?
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Suppose someone you respect observed your ministry, then gave you this warning—“Your ministry is shallow. If it doesn’t change, it will die.” At that point, you’d change, right? Actually, you probably wouldn’t. You’d likely fall in with the majority of people who fail to make changes even when the stakes are as high as you can imagine.
Every day people fail to make changes Now, even when their own lives are on the line. According to Dr. Edward Miller, dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University, about 600,000 people in the United States have heart bypasses every year, and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties, all at a total cost of around $30 billion. These procedures relieve chest pains temporarily but are not viewed as long-term solutions. About half the time bypass grafts clog up within a few years and angioplasties often need redoing after a few months.
Many patients could avoid repeating the surgery, as well as address their actual heart disease, by adopting healthier lifestyles. Yet very few do. Miller summarizes, “If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyles.”6
It’s not because these patients don’t know the basic steps to better health. In all likelihood their friends and doctors have warned them to start exercising and cut back on smoking, drinking, stress, and unhealthy eating. I’d even be willing to guess that many (perhaps most) of them have tried to obey their doctors’ orders. But the path to healthy eating is laden with burgers and fries, and the path to exercise is blocked by the all-too-comfortable couch.
Change or die. Tragically, most people end up sabotaging their progress now because they don’t have what it takes to make changes that would save their lives later. So let’s be honest: change is hard. All growth requires some kind of pain. Even when it’s only your own behavior that needs changing, you still might not be able to do it.
Hindering God’s transformation: Change is hard work—even if it’s just changing ourselves.
But we’re asking you to do something even harder. As you walk through the Deep Design process in each chapter, you’ll likely realize that students, parents, adult staff, and your entire church community need to change as much as you. Maybe even more. So you’re not up against only your own resistance to change—you’re up against theirs, too.
Deep Change: A Tale of Two Chances
I’ve learned the hard way how tough it is to bring about deep change. A few years ago we decided we needed to clarify the vision of our junior high ministry. So the four paid staff members read a book about youth ministry vision and then met for two hours to talk about it. We agreed that we liked the book’s ideas, but some of the words didn’t fit our students. After spending about 15 minutes brainstorming better words, we congratulated ourselves for coming up with “our” new vision statement so quickly.
At the next staff meeting, we presented our new vision statement to our adult volunteers. We shared it with our students the following Sunday. At our next parents meeting, we told them about it. We invited everyone to memorize it so they could better partner with us.
I don’t think a single one of them memorized it.
Truth be told, neither did I.
For one thing, it was too long. Plus, we had come up with it so quickly that I didn’t really feel like I owned it.
We lost sight of that vision statement. (Big surprise, eh?) Every four or five months, an adult volunteer would ask, “Whatever happened to that vision statement you guys gave us?” I’d usually shrug and say, “It’s still around here somewhere.” We tried to change our ministry by coming up with a creative and provocative vision statement, but we ended up with words on a page that got buried somewhere in my file cabinet.
Six months ago God provided me with a second chance. The high school pastor at our church invited my husband and me to help the youth ministry create a new vision statement. This time I was determined to follow the Deep Design process.
Creating space for God’s transformation: Giving us second (and third, and fourth!) chances to make changes effectively.
To answer the three Now questions about God’s transformation and how we were facilitating or hindering it, we held a series of focus groups with students, parents, adult volunteers, and graduates (see Chapter 12 for more on how you can do the same in your ministry). My husband and I wrote up the results and shared them with the high school pastor and the entire volunteer team at the next staff retreat.
Since there were 40 adults on the high school volunteer team, we agreed that we needed a specific Vision Team of 10 adults to explore New sources of depth. To glean all we could from Scripture, history, research, and experience, my husband and I asked the Vision Team to read chapters from a handful of books on vision and mission and then come together to discuss what we’d learned. We also discussed other leaders Who had developed similar visions, seeking to find what we could learn from them and how we needed to modify their examples.
To test whether we were on the right track, we presented our initial ideas to our student leadership team and the remaining 30 adult leaders. They gave us the green light to keep going, so the Vision Team met again to determine How to actually phrase and implement our new vision. We spent a few hours brainstorming not only the final content but also visual images that would help our students really embrace our direction. Finally, we talked about How to explain the vision to the overall church, to students and their families, and to adult leaders who hadn’t been such an integral part of the process.
This second time we got it right. We involved the right people, we took the right amount of time, and we followed the right steps.
Odds are good that your ministry will not literally “die” tomorrow if you don’t make major changes immediately. But maybe it’s getting sick, or perhaps it’s in need of a thorough physical. The longer you wait to address its health, the more likely your students are to drift away without experiencing the Divine Healer. Whether your ministry needs a minor check-up or major surgery, there is a deeper and more abundant life waiting for you and your students when you open yourself to the process of change.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 2 (REFLECTION) : NEW?
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Experience: We youth workers aren’t known for our savvy in making changes.
It’s time for a group confession: we youth workers aren’t known for our savvy when it comes to leading ministry changes. Some of us act like Lone Rangers and try to bring about change ourselves. Others walk into important meetings with people who might resist change (including the pastors and committees who supervise us!) as if we were preparing for a final showdown at the O.K. Corral.
What’s wrong with those approaches? They represent lousy change processes. Even if we have the best idea ever, if we can’t communicate it with others so they get on board with us, we may as well be sending out smoke signals.
Our four-step Deep Design is incomplete if a healthy process doesn’t surround it. Many attempts at change fail not because the leaders lack ideas, but because of poor communication and process. Here are some vital “Change Principles” to help you avoid the common pitfalls.
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Experience: Even the best Deep Design will fail without vital Change Principles.
Change Principle 1: Get People Involved
If I had to choose one Scripture passage to summarize how to effectively involve people in the changes associated with your Deep Design, it would be Ephesians 4:11-12a. In these verses, Paul writes the church of Ephesus, “It was he [God] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, so these leaders could do all the works of service themselves.”
Huh? Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right. Let’s try it again.
“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service.”
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Scripture: I act most like a minister when others do the ministry.
Ah, that sounds more like it. According to Paul, you’re doing your best job as a leader when others are involved in service. You are acting most like a pastor when you help others engage fully in ministry.
This first-century teaching was lost as the church grew in power and scope. Instead of the priest being the one who helped others do ministry, the priest became the one who did the ministry. As a result a great separation developed between those who had “spiritual” vocations (priests) and those who had “worldly” vocations (everyone else).
This chasm was exemplified in the distinctions between the priest and the people that guided communion practices in the Middle Ages—the priest was at the altar, the people came to the altar rail; the priest stood, but the people kneeled; the priest took the bread and wine, but the people received only the bread. In summarizing the overall climate of the 16th century, Martin Luther writes, “Whoever looked at a monk fairly drooled in devotion and had to be ashamed of his secular station in life.”7
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
History: In the Middle Ages, there was a great divide between the power and prestige of priests and the rest of the faith community.
In an effort to reclaim Paul’s teachings about the role of priests in the community, Luther taught that believers do not need a priest or a pope to approach God but can commune with God directly all by themselves. Yet this journey is far from individualistic; each believer’s direct communion with God is enhanced and enabled by the community of the church. Thus all members of the community serve as priests for one another, or in Luther’s words, “all Christians are priests, and all priests are Christians.”8 By this deep teaching known as the “priesthood of all believers,” Luther leveled the ministerial playing field.
This historical teaching helps us invite full input from other members, or priests, in our communities as we seek deep change in our ministries with youth. At the very least they should give input; but your change process will be even more effective if these members are part of the decision process. Those of us who are “take charge” youth workers need to ask hard questions: Do I view my students and adult leaders as voices through whom the Holy Spirit is speaking? Or do I think of them as people who merely carry out what the Holy Spirit has shown me?
Do we really listen to others in our ministries because we understand that they have valuable perspectives that we need to hear? Or do we only pretend to listen to them as a way to get them on our sides and ensure their support for our own ideas?
Trust us, your team members can tell if you truly value them and sincerely want to hear from them or if you’re faking it. Rushing ahead with your own ideas without involving others and their input might bring a few short-term wins, but in the end you’ll probably lose more ground than you’ve gained.
Change Principle 2: Figure Out Your Reasons
After interviewing more than 400 people from 130 organizations, John P. Kotter claims that most organizations make one crucial mistake in trying to help their teams make changes: they don’t give vivid reasons for the change. They give people data to changes their opinions instead of showing them truth that will influence their feelings. In other words, these leaders speak to the head instead of the heart.
One of Kotter’s examples—a visual, provocative explanation of why change is needed—is so powerful that we want to offer it here in the words of Jon Stegner, the manufacturing CEO who shared the story during his interview.
We had a problem with our whole purchasing process. I was convinced that a great deal of money was being wasted and would continue to be wasted into the future, and that we didn’t even know how much money was being thrown away…
To get a sense of the magnitude of the problem, I asked one of our summer students to do a small study of how much we pay for the different kinds of gloves used in our factories and how many different gloves we buy. I chose one item to keep it simple, something all the plants use and something we can all easily relate to.
When the student completed the project, she reported that our factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves. Four hundred and twenty four. Every factory had their own supplier and their own negotiated price. The same glove could cost $5 at one factory and $17 at another. Five dollars or even $17 may not seem like much money, but we buy a lot of gloves, and this was just one example of our purchasing problem.
The student was able to collect a sample of every one of the 424 gloves. She tagged each one with the price on it and the factory it was used in…We gathered them all up and put them in our boardroom one day. Then we invited all the division presidents to come visit the room. What they saw was a large, expensive table, normally clean or with a few papers, now stacked with gloves. Each of our executives stared at this display for a minute. Then each said something like, “We buy all these different types of gloves?”
The demonstration quickly gained notoriety. The gloves became part of a traveling road show. They went to every division. They went to dozens of plants. Many, many people had the opportunity to look at the stacks of gloves. The road show reinforced at every level of the organization a sense of “this is how bad it is.”9
Maybe some of the following ideas can help you think about creative ways to illustrate why something must be done in your own ministry:
Videotape students offering their honest input about how your ministry is doing. Invite students in your community who don’t come to your youth group to attend one of your meetings. Then have your team take them out for pizza afterward so you can hear what they thought was good and what they thought stunk. Ask some of your students or adults to visit other ministries and come back and share what they saw, heard, and experienced. Invite the team members involved in your change process to imagine that they are parents, students who don’t feel connected to your ministry, or students who don’t know Jesus yet. Ask them to imagine that they’ve come to a youth service or event. What would they experience? How would they feel? Have them journal their answers and then share them with the group. Give your kids cameras and ask them to take pictures of people or events that represent the needs of kids in your community. Discuss the pictures to see what changes you might need to make in order to better love and serve kids near your church.
Change Principle 3: What Are the Forces at Work?
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Research: Every change is helped by driving forces and hindered by resisting forces.
As you’re flowing through the Deep Design process and identifying where you are Now, important New insights, and models Who you can learn from, you need to ask yourself two key questions: What forces will resist change? and What forces will drive change?
According to Kurt Lewin, these two types of forces stand in opposition to each other and together create a force field. 10
Diagram 3.1: Forces Involved in Launching Change
To modify a famous Star Wars quote, you want the right forces to be with you. In other words, you want to increase the driving forces and minimize the resisting forces.
As you’ll note in Diagram 3.1, both driving and resisting forces generally fall into three categories:
People—particular students, parents, adult staff, church leaders, and members of your community. Values—beliefs and principles that your ministry holds dear. Structures and programs—services, meetings, activities, and ministry programs already in place that could serve either as catalysts for or obstacles to your change.
In Diagram 3.1, the arrows are equal in size, but a longer or shorter arrow would reflect a stronger or weaker force. (If you are more numbers-oriented than arrows-oriented, you could assign each force a numeric value between 1 and 5.)
For a more in-depth look at forces involved in bringing new changes and innovations to your ministry, check out www. cyfm.net.
The “Niners”
A few years ago we considered a major change in our youth ministry. Since many of our eighth graders were getting lost in the shuffle during the transition to high school, we wondered if we should start a separate ministry for freshmen during that first summer and fall called “Niners.” The goals of the Niners ministry were to ease the transition for the incoming freshmen and develop the leadership skills of the high school seniors whom we’d ask to lead the Niners ministry. A Force Field diagram for our decision looked something like this:
Diagram 3.2: Forces Involved in Launching Niners
After studying the forces shaping this new ministry, we knew what we needed to do: figure out how to get on board those who couldn’t wait to go to high school and find a place and time to meet. Thanks largely to the momentum provided by the new ministry’s resonance with our values, we knew we were on the right track.
Drawing a Force Field diagram accomplishes two goals. First, it shows you the assets that can help with your change (in this case, our values and those nervous freshmen). Second, it shows you the obstacles you need to address as you make your change (in this case, the fact that no adult class wanted a bunch of 14-year-olds meeting next to them on Sunday mornings). As you figure out which forces are like the wind in your sails—and which are like the wind in your face—you’ll be able to better navigate the seas of change.
Change Principle 4: Meaningfully Communicate Your Message
Even if your vision for change is perfect, your change may be too shallow if you fail to communicate your message to others in empathetic and meaningful ways.
Often when we sense that others might resist the change we desire, we avoid their tough questions. When we do sit down with them, we often make the mistake of becoming defensive or belittling their concerns and minimizing the risks. But a commitment to sending clear messages enables us to fight against these defeating tendencies and communicate our Deep Design to others.
One of the many reasons we’ve placed history in our New reflection is because of its value in helping others understand the importance of our proposed changes. When we understand both church history in general and the specific history of our own congregation, we’re able to discuss why we’ve done what we’ve done in the past, and why our ministry needs to be reformed and reshaped. As we explain the changes that are coming, it’s important to couch them in a sense of the organic unfolding of events in our community. In many cases, the added depth we’re trying to bring to our ministries is more like adding the next ring to the tree trunk instead of uprooting the tree and planting it elsewhere.
In communicating the need for change, it’s equally important that we explain what should not change. There are undoubtedly elements of your current ministry that God is using to transform students. Taking the time to identify and affirm them can help others in your ministry and church affirm the new directions you need to pursue.
You can communicate the message in a variety of forms: through e-mail, handwritten notes, meetings, videos, Power Point® presentations, dramas, role plays, and art. Ideally you won’t be the only one doing the communicating—you’ll invite other strategic voices to help spread the message. If you’re talking to parents, perhaps you should invite one of them to help explain the change. If you’re talking to student leaders, another student might better explain the change.
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Experience: The more you involve others in spreading your change message, the more likely others will get on board.
But what about all the time it takes to communicate with others? Won’t that slow you down? For all you time-conscious youth workers, the good news is that the time you spend in communication in the beginning will actually save you time in the end—and will give you more time overall. The more you explain changes and give people opportunities to ask tough questions in the early stages, the less resistance you’ll get later on.
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Experience: The time you spend communicating up front will save you time in the end.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 3 (OBSERVATION) : WHO?
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Typically at this point in the Deep Design process, we share stories of youth workers Who have applied the New ideas to their own ministries. They’ve moved from armchair quarterbacking to gutting it out on the field of play. In every other chapter in this book, we offer you the chance to think about ways your story is similar to and different from that of other youth workers, and How God might want to take your ministry deeper.
But this chapter is a bit different. We felt we couldn’t go any further without taking a closer look at the Ultimate Youth Worker. We thought it was time to see what Jesus has to say about change, and how that relates to a deeper ministry.
For being the primo change agent in all of history, Jesus says surprisingly little about change. But in Matthew 18, he gives us a great picture of how to view ourselves in the midst of any change process or Deep Design. While in Capernaum, Jesus’ disciples approach him and ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Ever concerned about power and position, the disciples are wondering who will be the top dog.
If I had been Jesus, I’d have been looking for something to throw at them. How could they be wondering about the heavenly hierarchy so shortly after he’d told them he would be betrayed and killed (Matthew 17:22–23) ? Are they so insensitive that they care more about their pecking order than Jesus’ imminent death?
Instead of getting violent, Jesus gets visual. He calls a little child to them and has the child stand in their midst. Then Jesus warns the disciples, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
Understanding how children were viewed at the time makes Jesus’ admonition to become like them even more startling. In the Greco-Roman world, children were among the least-valued members of society. If I were a disciple who’d just heard Jesus’ words, I’d wonder: What’s so great about being a child? How can inferiority be my ticket into the kingdom? How low do I have to go to follow this Jesus?
Jesus goes on to explain that “whoever humbles themselves like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4).
Jesus gave his followers a picture of his goal for them: that they would humble themselves. That like children who are dependent on others for their very lives, the disciples would recognize that they, too, are dependent on Jesus for eternal life in the future and earthly life in the present.
As we learn from Scripture, history, research, and experience in this book, let’s agree here and now that all great change comes ultimately from God.
All favor comes from God.
All blessing comes from God.
All deep ministry comes from God.
Children know they need their parents. They hover close to them when they’re fearful, and they sprint to them when they’re ecstatic. In this book, let’s have that same attitude about God. Let’s admit to ourselves and everyone else we talk to that we need God. We’re desperate for him to show us how to get past shallow waters. If we don’t feel all that desperate for God, let’s confess that to him and ask him to show us how much we need him (a scary prayer, I know).
Only then will we truly experience the depth God has for our ministries and ourselves. Only when we fully rely on God will we reverse the bleak change statistics we read about earlier in this chapter. As we rely on our Abba “Father,” I’m betting he’ll help us beat the odds.
DEEP DESIGN, STEP 4 (APPLICATION) : HOW?
DEEP DESIGN PROMPT
Application Questions:
What changes has God brought about in you in this last year? What changes has he brought about in your ministry? Which of the four Change Principles (the People, the Reasons, the Forces, and the Message) is most important for you these days? Why? How could you make some progress in that area in the next month? Think of little children you know well. What would have to change in your life if you would be more like them? What difference would these changes make in the way you lead? How would you like to go deeper in bringing about change?
How are we going to go deeper in bringing about change?
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